Give 30 Minutes of Performance Feedback Every 30 Days in Business and at Work

It was great to see my friend, mentor and colleague Rich Landau at his firm’s Annual Workplace Conference last week. I attended his break-out session, “Re-Evaluating Your Performance Evaluations.” Rich reinforced my own belief that performance feedback should occur regularly, real-time and with fact-based metrics, reviewing highs, lows and opportunities for mutual and ongoing success, as opposed to the mutual stress we all feel in giving and receiving feedback solely during an annual performance evaluation process.

Rich shared the “30 in 30” method: take 30 minutes every 30 days to give a performance evaluation progress report. I was intrigued. Based on my own positive performance feedback experiences, here’s how “30 in 30” could work in practice:

  • Schedule your “30 in 30” monthly meetings at the beginning of each fiscal year.
  • A few days before the “30 in 30” meeting, the team member can send their team leader a summary email of the past 30 days in bullet point form, outlining progress to goals, performance to metrics, challenges and opportunities.
  • At the meeting, the team member and their team leader can take 30 minutes to debrief on the team member’s email summary, confirming agreement (or discussing gaps in understanding) on the email summary.
  • After the 30-minute meeting, the team member can summarize the discussion in brief, bullet-point format in a second email to their team leader.
  • The team leader can then confirm receipt and agreement of the summary, including but not limited to next steps, metrics, follow-up on challenges, etc.

How do you give (and receive) regular and meaningful performance feedback in business and at work?

Performance evaluation form